Academia Sinica President Emeritus Yuan-Tseh Lee has been awarded the "Ettore Majorana - Erice - Science for Peace Prize 2009" for playing a leading role in the advancement of science for peaceful purposes. Dr. Lee attended the award ceremony hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican in Rome on 29 January 2011.

Dr. Lee was awarded the prize in recognition of his activities devoted to frontier science and also for the promotion of the "Erice Geist", also known as the Spirit of Erice, the advocation of science without secrets and without borders.

The "Ettore Majorana - Erice - Science for Peace Prize" was established by the Sicilian Parliament. It recognizes the impressive achievements of the World Federation of Scientists (WFS), under the auspices of the Ettore Majorana Foundation and the Centre for Scientific Culture. Recipients are elected by the World Federation of Scientists.

The annual award includes a cash prize to assist recipients in their efforts to "promote science and peace throughout the world." The first edition of the prize was awarded in 1990.The prize is named after Ettore Majorana, an early 20th century theoretical physicist most well-known for his ideas about neutrino masses and also for his mysterious disappearance in 1938. Majorana was born in Sicily in 1906.

The WFS was founded in 1973. Currently over 10,000 scientists from over 110 countries are members of the federation. The most famous accomplishment of the WFS is the establishment of the 'Erice Statement' in 1982 which opposes the use of science for militaristic means and promotes the use of science for peace.

Dr. Lee was elected an Academia Sinica Academician in 1980 and was the President of Academia Sinica from 1994 to 2006. He is currently a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences. Over the course of his career he has received numerous awards including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1986), the Ernest O. Lawrence Award, U.S. Department of Energy (1981), the Peter Debye Award of Physical Chemistry, American Chemical Society (1986), the National Medal of Science, White House, U.S.A. (1986), the Faraday Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, London, U.K. (1992), The Clark Kerr Award, University of California at Berkeley (1999), the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India (2004), the Othmer Gold Medal, The Chemical Heritage Foundation, U.S.A. (2008).

He is also a fellow, of the American Academy of Arts and Science (1975), U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1979), Academia Sinica, Taiwan (1980), Gottingen Academy of Sciences, Germany (1988), Indian National Science Academy (1997), and the Pontifical Academy of Science (2007). He received honorary doctorates from 37 universities around the world. Dr. Lee is also the current President of International Council of Science (ICSU) in coming October. His term lasts until 2014.

Related websites:World Federation of Scientists: http://www.federationofscientists.org/
Ettore Majorana Foundation and the Centre for Scientific Culture: http://www.ccsem.infn.it/index.htm